Midterms are one of the many nightmares for college students. You are barely getting the hang of your schedule and learning time management for the new quarter when, BAM! A midterm seems to always be right around the corner, especially if the class has two, which in that case midterms begin as early as week three. You don’t even know the professor’s name by heart yet when you must take an exam that is two-thirds of your grade, or half depending on how many there are, and is so long that you are sure it is impossible to finish in the time given.
Not all midterms take place in class or within just a class time to finish. Take-home midterms, although rare, do tend to be the case for some college courses. Here are some pros and cons of having a take-home midterm rather than an in-class one:
Pro: You usually have about a week to get it done
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With take-home midterms, professors usually assign it a week before it is due. If lucky, some professors even give students two weeks to do the midterm, but those are usually essays for writing or humanities courses. There is no pressure on knowing the material or writing the essay the day of the exam and inside the lecture hall, which can free you of much stress that this can cause.
Con: Higher expectations because you had time
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Even though it is a blessing to have more time for an exam, professors are expecting more effort and great quality work from you. They know that they cannot expect students to create masterpieces in 50 to 80 minutes of class, but they will expect you to create a masterpiece if you had a week or more to get it done. Knowing that the expectations are greater and that the grading will be harder can be more stressful than studying for an in-class exam. So much for feeling glad to have more time!
Pro: It is open-note
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Take-home midterms are implied to be open-note. I mean, you are probably doing the midterm in the privacy of your room (or better yet, a coffee shop) and professors know you will look at your notes. That is the point of a take-home midterm; the professor is allowing you to use any resource you have in order to get it done. No one is going to stop you so by all means, please use everything you have available!
Con: You do not study and end up learning nothing
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Being able to complete the midterm without having to learn the material because you can look at your notes can seem like the best thing in your life. However, if the final is not open-note or take-home, well, let’s just say you are in trouble. There was no learning involved, just copying what you saw, and the final will require your own knowledge of the class material. So try to learn something!
Pro: You can divide the work into multiple days
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The good thing about having a week or more to finish the midterm is that you can divide the amount of work you do each day so that it does not pile up in just one, like normal in-class midterms do. Planning out the exam throughout the days helps with stress and anxiety that can come if you were to have one day and limited time to get it done.
Con: You end up doing it the night before
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The bad thing is, planning and distribution of workload will most likely never happen. What does happen is that the night before, at around ten at night, you realize you had that one exam you pushed to the back of your brain and now you have less than 12 hours to get it done and have it ready for class. The stress you were supposed to save yourself just quadrupled inside of you and you do not eat, sleep or blink for those next 12 hours.
Not to take away the joy of take-home midterms or anything, but next time you hear those three words in your class, make sure you make the most out of this rare opportunity. It probably will not happen again in your college career so save yourself from the cons of take-home midterms and make sure you put into practice all the pros!